rolling ear to ear and back again

Wix Breakfast: Brand Personality!

School’s getting closer, so I decided to retrain myself for it by going to bed ridiculously late and waking up ridiculously early for a lecture! Yay! I found it on Eventbrite while browsing and took a chance.

And I’m really glad I did. It was a really interesting seminar, a little on the short side, full of little tips I would have never thought of, like how important emotional touchstones, big and small (“anything from a big brand experience to a tweet”), are to a customer base. There are tons of examples of these connections with consumers that I can think of. Some smaller gestures include Xbox’s (T, F) and T-Mobile’s (T, F) avid usage of their twitter handles and Facebook support apps to annual events like Krispy Kreme’s Day of the Dozens, Talk Like a Pirate, and National Doughnut Days. Everyone remembers larger political gestures like Oreo’s support for gay pride, to well-established, company-wide policies like Starbucks’ C.A.F.E Practices (they work with Conservation International to keep the farming sustainable) and TOMS Shoes policy of donating a pair of shoes for every pair purchased. All of them work to improve the perception of the brand and endear its consumers to it, while actually decreasing a little of the bad in the world at the same time. And of course, little gestures like that are key for small business owners to create their own communities; Milk Sugar Love’s content on their Facebook page regularly attempts to engage users with questions and relatable expressions.

Not always making your brand the hero when it comes to social media content was a really good one. I think a lot of small businesses, especially those that are either very singular in their pursuit or are soloists physically tend to forget that not all of their content has to relate back to themselves. That was another thing I would commend Milk Sugar Love on; they don’t “beat you over the head” with the brand as someone in the audience puts it. Not all of the posts are directly related to the product itself. Quality can be revealed and a connection can be made without having to refer to oneself all the time.

Consumers, especially, like being acknowledged. Big YouTubers, especially the older ones (charlieissocoollike), are really good at that. At the end of their videos, they’re constantly (sxephil) thanking (Matthias) the viewer (KurtHugoSchneider) for supporting them (David Choi) and getting them where they are, even making milestone videos (WongFuProductions) focused solely on encouraging (zefrank1) their viewers (Michelle Phan), or assigning whole (Vsauce) segments (SortedFood) to featuring their viewers and their accomplishments. (Can you tell I’m on YouTube like all of the time? Yeah.)

I got a lot of learning and thinking done today, and I’m excited to continue expanding my knowledge as time goes on. I chose marketing and business as a branch of learning because I think connecting to people is important, is exciting, and motivates me to move forward. My day was an exemplary representation of that drive.

(Also, I landed myself a job through sheer force of personality! Hurrah!)